[news.eclipse.platform.rcp] Re: Feature does not appers in

[Daniel Krügler <dsp@xxxxxxx>]

Boris Bokowski wrote:
> The feature details are supplied using about.ini, about.properties and
> about.html files in the plug-in associated with the feature (a plug-in with
> the same name as the feature).

Thank your very much for that tip, but let me refine that:

First, I assume, that you mean that the fragment-id must match the 
plug-in id, which hosts those files, right?

Actually I have problems understanding the **differences** between the 
relatively new .product way to perform branding versus the older one 
based on features. Although some parts of the help even describe the 
feature-based way as "deprecated" (See description of "Primary feature"
in the help), I stumbled about cross-interactions between both mechanism
at the point when I started to provide my about-dialog product 
description, which needed some formatting. By pure chance I found that
I needed to provide the about.mappings file therefore..

Another point is, that currently I have the impression (please correct,
if necessary), that features are a **must** in case of using the Eclipse
update mechanism. If that is true, than describing features as 
deprecated is definitely the wrong way.

Further on it seems if there are many overlaps between those two 
mechanisms. E.g. about.ini can provide "aboutText", "appName", and
"aboutImage", which are similar, if not identical to the corresponding 
entries of the "org.eclipse.core.runtime.products" ext. pt.
Then we have the .product file where I also can define some parts of 
branding like "Window images", "Splash Screen" as well as about dialog 
properties. Which is the relative rank of these three(!) methods? Does 
there exist one of them, which can provide **everything** of the branding?

Is the meaning of the optional config.ini in the .product file the same
as that of the about.ini you mentioned?

Last but not least: Is the pure existence of (empty) about.ini and
about.html the flag to activate the "feature" button in the about 
dialog? Because I wouldn't like to write anything into about.ini, that
already has been provided in my .product file.

Somewhat confused,

Daniel Krügler